Paul Tingey

Carrier Grade Linux version 4.0 specification is released

Last week saw Carrier Grade Linux take a further step forward with the release of the latest version of the specification. The CGL 4.0 document, released on 26th February 2007, is the result of work by individuals in many organizations and heralds a new level of collaboration between all those involved in the Carrier Grade equipment business.

CGL 4.0 is the first version of the Carrier Grade Linux specification to be released by the Linux Foundation, a recently created group formed by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group.

Improved alignment between the requirements of the telecoms equipment providers and the contents of the CGL Specification itself has been made possible through the work of the SCOPE Alliance. This consortium of equipment providers (such as Motorola, Alcatel/Lucent, Nokia, Huawei and others) has created a profile to outline those features of a carrier grade system which are most important for them and their customers to act as a kind of guidance system to keep the CGL specification in line with end user requirements.

The CGL profile created by SCOPE defines a total of approximately 250 individual requirements or features divided into seven groups; Availability, Clustering, Serviceability, Performance, Standards, Hardware and Security. Each of the individual requirements is assigned one of three priority levels; Mandatory, Desired and Roadmap. Obviously those requirements defined as Mandatory are seen as necessary to a successful Carrier Grade Linux system and, as such, must be present in any CGL 4.0 registered distribution.

Prior to CGL 4.0 there was no formalized registration process for Linux distributions claiming compliance. However, CGL 4.0 introduces a formal registration process and requires that any compliant distribution must meet all of the 135 Mandatory requirements.

The next step in the evolution of CGL will see the specification aligned with the Linux Standards Base (LSB) with the aim of increasing compatibility between CGL compliant and mainline distributions such that applications will run on either type of Linux in exactly the same way.

The CGL specification has been through a number of iterations (the first version was released in 2002) but the collaboration between standards groups, Linux vendors and equipment providers which is such a feature of the development of the CGL 4.0 specification marks a particularly important milestone in the story of Carrier Grade Linux. Cooperation between interested parties of this kind is likely to reinforce the position of CGL as the operating system of choice for telecom systems in the future.

BT encouraged to be more open

I have often written in this blog about open source and its use in the kinds of equipment which sits at the heart of telecommunications networks. Carrier Grade Linux and other open source technology, whilst not quite pervasive yet, are becoming more and more commonplace as underlying component technologies in mobile and Internet core elements.

On the other hand, I haven't written much about user devices (or Customer Premise Equipment). However you can be sure that open source software is making an equally big mark in that area although, generally speaking, its use stays "under the radar" with most users remaining unaware of the nature of the software which operates the networked devices in their homes.

Occasionally however, events force open source software above the radar and into plain sight. The last few weeks have seen an example of this in the UK centering around a particularly widely used ADSL broadband Wireless router; the BT Home Hub. The device was launched about six months ago and supports an integrated VoIP phone as well as BT's Fusion FMC offering and their Vision IPTV offering. BT supply telephone and DSL services to a large proportion of UK household and, as a result, the Home Hub has gained many users in a short time.

A few weeks ago, after questions raised by users, BT admitted that the Home Hub was based on open source software (including Linux) and is therefore subject to the terms of the GPL. Since then the story has been closely followed by The Register, The Free Software Foundation Europe and various blogs (most notably Home Hub Blog).

Eventually, after a short delay, BT posted the source code for the Linux kernel used on the Home Hub on a web site (found here). However, the situation seems to be rumbling on with BT claiming they have published everything relevant and the Free Software Foundation Europe claiming that some elements (such as the top level Makefile) are still missing.

This situation and the continuing pressure on BT to open up their source code highlights, for me, how far we have come down the route to open source. It feels starkly different to the situation in the late 1980's and early 1990's when I was involved in the design of a test strategy for a telephony device which was approved under the BABT certification process. The aim of the testing process was to ensure that users were safe while using the product and also that the network itself would not be adversely affected by connection of the product. The process we put in place included safety tests as well as device functionality tests and, after the tests were successfully passed, we were required to physically seal the plastics so that the device could not be tampered with. These procedures were enforced by stringent inspections and failure of any part of the testing process caused a stop of the production line.

So, in some ways, it seems somewhat strange to me that we now have a telephone network within which open-ness (based on open source and open standards) is an integral part. Of course the true nature of the telephone network is more of a regulated network infrastructure incorporating isolated islands of open-ness but even that feels a world away from the closed and heavily controlled nature of the BT network in the 80's and 90's when even manufacturers (let alone home users) could not easily change the code in their devices without considering the impact on their certification status.

Of course open source and open standards are here to stay since they offer the opportunity to accelerate product development and should therefore be welcomed. I wonder if the product managers in charge of the BT Home Hub are thinking the same way?

Open Source makes Free Beer possible

Open source has made a lot of things possible in the years since it first appeared. Of course, Linux is probably the best known open source project but there are also countless other projects which have caught the imagination of computer users worldwide (for example PHP, MySQL, Apache and BSD). Free Beer is not an obvious child of the open source revolution but it really does exist. Read on and I'll explain more shortly....

Firstly, here is an interesting question; what is the dominant feature of open source? Is it the availability of source code or is it the community working on the project? Is open source simply about making source code available to everyone or is it about building communities of like-minded people?

One interesting commentary on this question was written a few weeks ago by Bill Weinberg. In his article entitled Open Source is not a verb he argues that the verb "to open source" has a wider meaning than simply attaching a license to some source code and posting it in a Sourceforge project. According to Weinberg, open sourcing is about building and nurturing a community and without that community, the act of open sourcing is incomplete since the result is "lifeless, static and unread".

What was particularly interesting about the article was the reaction it received. Many opinions about his linguistics and spelling were expressed but, more importantly, others commented that the mere act of placing source code where others could see it was "open sourcing" in its truest and most complete form.

For my part, I think it depends largely on perspective. For those individuals who work within projects, source code is a catalytic element which spawns and drives a project forward and as such, it is crucial to the momentum of the project. However, it is often the case that users of open source based products rarely (if ever) look at the source code. For example, it is my experience that Firefox users hardly ever download the Firefox source code; for them the active and enthusiastic community developing and evolving the product is much more important than their own individual access to the source code.

Of course, being in the software industry, it is easy to forget that open source is not just about software source code. The same ideal of a community of interested parties working together to develop a project can, and is, adopted across many interest areas.

Grupthink, a site which enables users to ask and vote on open-ended questions, recently explored the topic of Best Open Source Project. Voting still continues but, as of today, the Firefox browser, notable for it's strong community, seems to be well placed to take this particular title.

Possibly more interesting however is the project in second place. Wikipedia, a resource for which no source code (in the traditional sense) exists, is licensed under a GFDL license and is therefore a true open source project. It is most notable for its up-to-date content which is a direct result of its vibrate community of volunteer editors without which Wikipedia would quickly become "lifeless, static and unread". As such, Wikipedia must surely stand as a striking example of the importance of an active community.

By the way, third in the Grupthink list is the worlds most widely used web server Apache, and fourth, despite being thought of by many as the "big daddy" of all open source projects, is Linux.

But open source does not begin and end in the software and/or Internet domain. An excellent example is Free Beer; an open source beer for which the recipe is freely available for download and modification and any product produced can be sold for profit as long as the derived recipe is published under the same license and appropriate credit is given. The recipe is published under a Creative Commons license and it's currently at version 3.0.

So Free Beer is, in reality, only free as in free speech (not as in free beer). Which means that, like Wikipedia and Linux, it is available for anyone to examine and to modify and it's also available for users to consume (at an appropriate cost). In the case of Free Beer that's a benefit which I suspect will be more frequently enjoyed than examination or modification !

Open Source: Do you love it or hate it?

Paul Parkinson's recent post Linux in Aerospace and Defense outlined some of the questions being raised about the adoption of Linux in missions critical applications. Of course as Linux has evolved over the last few years, its "suitability for purpose" has been questioned by just about everyone who has come into contact with it.

This analysis often leads to one of two outcomes as mentioned in Paul's post; you either love it or you hate it. However, it's interesting to note that this love or hate relationship often extends to the whole notion of open source in general.

These opposite views often manifest themselves on an individual level. An example of this is the wildly differing views of Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU project and President of the Free Software Foundation, and Daniel Wallace who is primarily known for filing lawsuits against various free and open source organizations on the basis of price fixing.

Outside of these individual views it is interesting to note that entire organizations can also appear to become lovers or haters of open source. A recent blog entry by Jeff Kaplan (Thailand v. Philippines: Open Source Opposites?) outlined one such case. The two sides line up as follows:

• The Philippines Congress is to discuss a proposed Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Act which will mandate the use of open source software in Government and Educational establishments.
• Thailand's ICT Minister, Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom has described open source code as being of low-quality and full of bugs. He also suggested that the lack of intellectual property rights associated with open source can lead to stagnation in software development.

Of course these establishment views are often actually the view of one or a few influential individuals viewed through the magnifying lens of government but its interesting nonetheless to see how, even on a world stage, open source software can incite division in the most unexpected of places.

But open source, like life, is not just about division and disagreement; sometimes bridges are built and agreements are made. An example is the subject of perhaps the most important open source news item of recent weeks, Microsoft and Novell's agreement to collaborate to improve the interoperability of Windows and Linux. This agreement has been viewed as a ground-breaking move forward in the evolution of open source which will ultimately see (Suse) Linux and Windows interoperate. Except, of course, that the majority of Linux commentators actually view it as simply a carefully crafted Microsoft strategy to fragment the open source community whilst making money in the process.

You see, in the open source world, even an agreement can cause disagreement.